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International Journal of Advanced Scientific

Research & Development
Vol. 03, Iss. 03, Ver. I, Jul Sep 2016, pp. 35 39

e-ISSN: 2395-6089
p-ISSN: 2394-8906

Knowledge Management using Gamification

Dr. P. VICTER PAUL
Department of Information Technology, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College, Puducherry,
India

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Article History:

The Knowledge management is the systematic approach on

the organisations knowledge assets for the purpose of
creating value and meeting tactical and strategical
requirements. It consists of the initiative process, strategies
and systems that enhance the storage, sharing and creation
of knowledge. Making the knowledge to be shared requires
motivation. This motivation can be achieved using
Gamification. Gamification helps to motivate the use of
knowledge management systems, to create and share
content. Our work is social hub which has some major
gamification features like rewards, challenges, leader board,
experience points, badges and Communities. This work
includes a specific feature for the users to retrieve the best
solution for queries from the discussion board. The best
solution can be retrieved by the users based on three options:
chronologically, based on votes, based on rank. The user can
obtain the best solution for the queries from any of the above
three options. To achieve more motivation and interaction,
the reward points are allocated for each action inside the
community. Special events and tasks will be available for the
users based on their interest. It is proven that Gamification
had made huge impact with an increase of 40% in the
knowledge sharing.

Received: 18 Aug 2016;

Received in revised form:
23 Aug 2016;
Accepted: 24 Aug 2016;
Published online: 25 Aug 2016.

Key words:
Gamification,
Knowledge management,
Gaming elements,
KMS

ACM Classification:

Copyright 2016 IJASRD. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Common Attibution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.

INTRODUCTION
Knowledge is the core of human competence. It is built and enhanced through
education, training, work experience, dialogue, participation and social interactions. In the
last few years, Knowledge management seemed to be the major ingredient of success in
business. Therefore Knowledge management provides a strong tie to organisational goals
How to cite this article: Paul, V. P. (2016). Knowledge Management Using Gamification. International Journal of
Advanced Scientific Research & Development (IJASRD), 03 (03/I), pp. 35 39.

Knowledge Management using Gamification

and strategies. Gamification is a business strategy which applies game design techniques to
the non-game experiences to drive user behaviour. Gamification uses techniques in the nongaming context to make employees and related audiences to analysis, change behaviour and
develop skills to drive innovation. Game mechanics, game dynamics and game design are
introduced in the underlying techniques to derive the business benefits from Gamification.
Gamification applies to most crucial functions in most organizations. The HR team
can use it for effective on boarding, Marketing teams can use it to invite branding ideas and
drive employee engagement, L&D team can use it for effective capability development.
Here are some KM areas that can effectively leverage Gamification:

Content Management: Host competitions to contribute content to the intranet.

Launch Recycle drives for keeping content relevant.
Sharing knowledge: Besides featuring top contributors on forums, promote them
as forum leads/experts/evangelists. Also, design indicators that show the impact of
sharing on departmental/ organizational growth.
Capturing knowledge: Games/activities that engages the larger workforce helps
capture behaviors, FAQs. Leverage social technology to showcase organizational
sharing patterns.

1.1 How Gamification Contribute to KM:

Knowledge management works better when people invest time and energy in it,
engage with it in a meaningful ways, contribute something and work together to solve the
problems.

Better data quality

Greater contribution of content
Improved documentation of processes
Increased interaction and use

LITERATURE SURVEY
We had reviewed various journals and research articles whose authors have their
footprint in the Knowledge management using Gamification.
Sergej Rinc[1] introduces the technique for integrating the gamification with
knowledge management. they analyses the frequencies of gamification terms in knowledge
management articles and tries to answer the question if only organizational learning would
be improved by integrating gamification or there are other knowledge management areas
that would benefit by it.
The results of his analysis were drawn in a graph with the terms of gamification
and knowledge management in the content.
Scott thiebes[2] explained about the gamification mechanics and dynamics. His
synthesis of mechanics and dynamics has 5 clusters- system design, challenges, rewards,
social influences and user specifics. His research approach is of two steps- systematic
literature review and data analysis.
The 5 clusters:

System design describes how a gamified application has to be designed and

developed to motivate the users.

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Paul (2016)

Challenges are used to motivate users.

Rewards are used to motivate users when certain actions were successfully taken.
Social influences were aimed to motivate users or a group of users by social dynamics
and influences, such as competitions, gaining status or user high scores.
User specific are used for motivating users by directly influencing the individual
personality by promoting self-expression.

Based on the study[2], the organizations need to recognise that Gamification is more than
a buzzword and requires meaningful designs in order to integrate Gamification into IS. This
clustering identifies the main aspects that should be considered when applying
Gamification approaches.
Michal Durinik[4] suggested a method for integrating gamification in Knowledge
management. He provided a detailed description about the game elements that is used in
the system. The game elements were points, badges, challenges, awards and rankings. The
explanation of the psychology of gamification that motivates the user to engage actively in
it.[4] Mentioned that gamified KMS is not only competitions, though points and
achievements are earned by ones abilities and help nourish ones self esteem. So
gamification can be of great benefits also in cultures that rely on individualism so heavily.
Thomas Wiegard[3] has explained the classification of gamification approaches and
instruments. The discussion involves how gamification is created. The method uses some
selected gamification instruments for his model. Method section is the second of four main
parts of an empirical paper. There are typically three or four major subsections in the
Method although there can be more.
EXISTING TECHNIQUE AND APPROACHES
Organization finds gamification an effective tool for Knowledge management. One
such organization is Accenture. The goal of Accentures approach is to ensure that the best
knowledge and experience of the firm is available to individual teams on individual
engagements so that knowledge and experience can be easily delivered to all.
The main elements of Accentures approach is connect, contribute and cultivate.
The key feature of the Accenture approach is to collect, store and retrieve statistics
associated with the desired activities. They can also keep tracks of

Individual contributors
Blog posts
Blog post readers
Microblog posts
Downloads for documents

The users receive points for their activities. The points are limited for each specific
activity in each quarter. The users accumulate the points and badges / awards are provided
that appear in the users profile. Accenture approach has 5 levels:

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Novice
Problem solver
Expert
Master
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Knowledge Management using Gamification

Visionary

The drawback of this approach is that there is no technique for sorting the solutions
or blog post for the post posted in the communities.
PROPOSED WORK
A survey on knowledge management using gamification says that there has been
40% increase in knowledge sharing using gamification. Organisation have started to move
towards integrating Knowledge management and gamification. Every gamification
technique has its own elements.
The proposed system has the gamification elements[4] like points, badges, challenges,
rewards and rankings. The proposed system has communities which is suggested to the
users based on their need. The communities holds the place to the users to place some post
or blogs. If a blog post or some queries are posted, the system refers the post with the
previously answered post to deliver the solution. The rewards and points are given to the
users based on their activity. The users are given the privilege to vote the answer for the
blog post. Based on these votes, the user can retrieve the best solution for the posts.
The algorithm for retrieving the best solution consists of three methods:
chronological, votes, rank. The chronological method will display all the solutions based on
the timeline. Each solution can be voted by the user. The second method is that, the
solutions are arranged based on the votes received (From most to least). The last method is
based on the ranks. The solution provided by the user with higher ranks will be displayed
first, followed by other solution in descending order of ranks.
Challenges and events will be conducted in the communities to engage the users to
participate actively in it. Rankings will be provided for the users based on the points they
gather from their activities.
IMPLEMENTATION
It is important to make a proper deign for integrating Gamification with Knowledge
management. This project has a proper design which satisfies all the game mechanic
elements. This site will be the social forum where the users can gather together and share
the knowledge. The users are joined into the communities based on their interest provided
in the profile. The communities will have several sub communities. The parent communities
will act as the news feeds of all the sub communities. When the user needs knowledge about
some specific domain or knowledge, then the user can join that particular communities to
post or share his knowledge. The communities will host special events, discussion boards on
major topics. The users are allowed to create communities once they reached a particular
rank gathered from the experience points.
Our project is a web service, so it will be hosted using some online vendors or hosts.
The design and contents of the site is developed using soft wares like Dreamweaver,
Photoshop etc. In the first phase, database for our project will be established. In the second
phase, the web sites look and feel will be done. In the third phase user page in the web site
will be developed. The game design mechanics will be implemented in the fourth phase.
Once site is ready, it will be hosted with the help of the hosts.
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CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The Knowledge Management systems achieve greater importance with the use of
gamification. Though the gamification is a difficult process to develop, we require a proper
design for the system to make it an effective one. Thus the proposed system will act as an
effective knowledge management system with the gamification techniques. The work can be
further expanded, by introducing techniques that enhance the user interactivity and
motivates them to actively involve in knowledge sharing.
REFERENCES
[1] Sergej Rinc (2014). Integrating Gamification with Knowledge Management, Portoroz,
Slovenia International Conference, 27 June 2014.
[2] Scott Theibes (2014). Gamifying information systems- A synthesis of Gamification
mechanics and dynamics, Twenty Second European Conference on Information
Systems, Tel Aviv, 2014.
[3] Thomas Wiegand (2015), Serious fun- Effects of Gamification on Knowledge Exchange in
Enterprises, Department of Information Systems, University of Muenster, Germany.
[4] Michal Durinlk (2014), Gamification in Knowledge Management systems, Central
European Journal of Management, 2014.
[5] Michael Meder (2013), Gamification- A semantic approach for user driven knowledge
conservation, Berlin, Germany.
[6] Darias Dicheva (2014), Gamification in Education A systematic mapping stud,
department of computer science, Winston Salem State University, North Caroline,
USA, 22 November 2014.
[7] Ilaria Caponetta (2014), Gamification and Education A literature Review, Genova,
Italy.
[8] Silvia Schacht (2011), The Project World- Gamification in Project Knowledge
Management, Twenty Second European Conference on Information Systems,
University of Mannheim, Germany.

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